It is obscure… unless you live in a country where Buddhism is a big part of the culture
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I myself do not know half the people they use in the mnemonics but I just look them up, most of them are actually quite interesting. I read about them and there you go, I hit two birds with one stone. I remember the mnemonic and even know the reading.
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For me, it’s really fun looking up their character references … who doesn’t remember the first time one of their mnemonics mentioned Hard Gay !! 
I spent too much time watching videos that day… so funny.
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I try to look at it from a more “native” perspective. I kept “flower viewing” in both WaniKani and my Anki sets, because I want to associate the concept of “flower viewing” with cherry blossom viewing explicitly so that eventually both 花見 and “flower viewing” will to me refer to cherry blossoms only 
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I think it’s the translation that’s awkward. Once you start thinking of 大仏s, you’ll see nothing but buddha statues .
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Uma Thurman getting married to Bill Gates
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Both. I’m sure that, culturally, it’s important to know that it’s mostly/only for looking at a particular plant, but I’m not a japanphile or what-have-you so I don’t really care. As long as it’s an accurate enough translation, I prefer shorter, easier answers.
Well, just “sakura viewing” would be more succinct, then. Translating 花見 as “flower viewing” is about as “accurate enough” as translating 皮肉 as “skin-meat” - it’s what the kanji say, sure, but it’s not what people mean when they say it.
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How about “sakura watch”, that’s even shorter than “flower viewing”.
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How about “hanami”? 
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